Fifa to decide on Kamuzu Stadium Thursday
World football authority Fifa will decide by Thursday whether to allow the Flames to use Kamuzu Stadium as the home venue for the remaining two 2014 World Cup African qualifiers.
FAM chief executive officer Suzgo Nyirenda on Saturday said Fifa will make the decision for the Flames June 2 and 12 matches against Namibia and Kenya respectively.
“Two months before a game, Fifa asks teams to submit names of their venues. Others, such as Namibia, submitted names of four venues. We expect Fifa to decide by Wednesday or Thursday on whether we will be allowed to use the stadium. Of course, there are issues which they mentioned such as inspection,” Nyirenda explained.
The Nation
had asked the FAM CEO on the actual venue of the qualifiers for Group F whose leaders are the Nigeria’s Super Eagles on superior aggregate to second-placed Malawi.
Both have five points.
After being left out of the list of venues which CAF inspected for international matches, FAM wrote Fifa to have the home qualifiers played at the cordoned-off Blantyre arena instead of Civo Stadium.
Flames caretaker coach Eddington Ng’onamo persuaded FAM to make the request to Fifa in view of the Flames’ near invicible home record.
Malawi last lost at Kamuzu Stadium 1-0 to Burkina Faso in 2009 in a competitive game.
“Our view is that we stand a better chance of doing well playing at Kamuzu Stadium than elsewhere based on the team’s recent performance and we have since recommended to FAM that we should play our remaining World Cup home matches in Blantyre,” Ng’onamo told The Nation recently.
Malawi last hosted Ghana and lost 1-0 last October at Civo after government shut down Kamuzu Stadium for safety reasons.
Since 2008, the Flames have reportedly played 15 games winning 11, drawing twice and losing twice in all competitions.
The stadium was reopened after cordoning off some suspect terraces, thereby reducing its capacity from the earlier prescribed 25 000 to around 17 000. The stadium’s manager Charles Mhango backed the decision to host international matches at his venue.
Malawi Institute of Engineers president Dr Matthews Mtumbuka recently argued that the stadium can host international matches as it was able to accommodate crowds for crowd-pulling domestic league matches.
The Flames wind up the qualifiers with a trip to Nigeria in September.
